The Killer Inside Me

The deputy sheriff of a small Texas town hides a dark secret in this classic 1952 crime novel from the author of The Grifters.

“Probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered.” —Stanley Kubrick

Everyone in the small town of Central City, Texas, loves Lou Ford. A deputy sheriff, Lou’s known to the small-time criminals, the real-estate entrepreneurs, and the rest of his fellow townsmen as the nicest guy around. He might not be the brightest or the most interesting man in town but he’s the kind of officer you’re happy to have keeping your streets safe.

But behind the platitudes and glad-handing lurks a monster the likes of which few have seen. A monster with a sickness that urges him to hurt others. A sickness that almost got Lou put away when he was younger, and that is about to surface again.

In The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thomspon goes where few novelists have dared to go, giving us a pitch-black glimpse into the mind of a serial killer years before Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, or Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, in a novel that will forever be known as his masterpiece.

“A twisted tale, told by a sociopath from his point of view. How twisted? This book leaves Silence of the Lambs in the dust.” —Huffington Post